Wednesday, January 22, 2014

What to do About Homeschooling When Mom is Sick

I barely slept at all last night. My somewhat icky feeling I woke with yesterday turned into a full blown head cold last night and I'm all stuffed up, grouchy and tired. Not a great way to start a homeschooling day.

I debated about taking a day off today but since the boys were a bit restless I pulled out a little bit of work to keep them occupied.

They each had all day to do three worksheets and I had planned to read a few stories but that was it.

They loved that they could come and go and work at their own pace today. I loved that the worksheets were mostly independent work and I could be mostly left alone to rest (hey, at least I'm honest!).

My oldest son couldn't wait to get outside and shovel. His ski pants were in the wash though and so he had to wait. The wait seemed like it was going to do him in so I suggested he start on his work. His brothers were not ready to start school (one of them wasn't even awake!), but Ian is my morning person and he's always raring to go bright and early.

He quickly completed his multiply and color worksheet and started on his Australia word search paper. He had asked me to print out this word search yesterday but really was not enjoying it today. So he set it aside and asked me to time him so he could complete his math minute. He finished all 21 problems with 5 seconds to spare today and happily added his 11 ice cream scoop facts to those that he has mastered. His clothes were finally dry and so he set aside the word search for later and headed outside.

Meanwhile the other two had decided to start on schoolwork also. Evan had a roll, add and cover sheet and he quickly set to work completing the sheet in no time. His number sense is really coming along nicely. At one point he rolled a two and a six and counted by two's to get to 8.

He worked on come color theory too as he used clear markers to color his numbers and started piling them on top of one another. "Mom, I made green, I put a blue on top of a yellow," I heard that and many, many others throughout the course of his math work.

He soon finished and asked me what else he had to do today. I found these cute mini printable books and picked "Is" for him to work on today. He had to write the word "is" on each of the pages and read me the sentence. He whined for a bit about writing and then decided to just get it over with. He was finished in no time and happily went to go play.

Alec did a little bit of his word search and a little bit of his multiplication sheet before he decided to put away all his schoolwork for later and went to work on his new Lego Chima set that he got for his birthday.

Ian lasted about an hour outside and when he came in he worked with Evan on building with our Gears, Gears, Gears. They had so much fun and I loved that they were all busy building away. They made a limousine, a flying car and many more very creative vehicles.

They eventually made it back to the table and completed all their work for the day. While Alec was finishing up, I read two more chapters in Odd and The Frost Giants at all of their requests. We are really starting to enjoy the book immensely! I think Evan and Ian are most excited since it's about Thor, Lotke and Odin and they're already claiming that we should watch the movie Thor one day as part of schooling. I'm sure we will too, but first we need to finish the book!

We finished up our day by looked through a few photo journals of Australia that we had gotten from my husband's aunt and played a quick Australia Bingo game. We ended up playing four rounds so everyone had a chance to win and when we tried to fill up the whole Bingo board they all won! It was funny and they had a great time playing.

Australia books

Bingo game

School was declared "done" for the day and the boys went back to playing. Ian helped fill up the wood rack for me and shoveled a bit more outside.

I'm allowing them to watch TV and movies so it will stay nice and quiet around here today. Maybe I can squeeze in a nap without them noticing! I just have the best job in the world that really does allow me to set my own pace and take time off when I'm under the weather! ﻿